Gun Printing Just Got Serious

Technology has a way of slipping up on us.

I got my first PC in 1985. An Apple. Remember when printing paper had the serrated edges? First laptop was sometime in the early 90s.

How many had a cell phone in the 80's? I did. It was mounted in my company care and I lived in Birmingham where there were probably 3 cell towers. Dropped calls were he norm. The phone cost close to $700 and there were no "free" minutes. I don't recall what texting and data charges were
In the late 80's or maybe early 90's I bought a bag phone that was actually portable though it weighed about 10 pounds. Maybe a year later I bought my first hand held cell phone. It was a technological marvel for about 6 months until "digital" towers started popping up and I switched to Powertel, now Tmobile. I had a Motorola Star Tac that would literally fit in a shirt pocket and weighed about an ounce.

When did you buy your first GPS unit? I bought mine back years ago when Hurricane Katrina ripped up the Gulf Coast and I had crews working the area that couldn't find their way around. $800 a pop and worth every dime. Now I don't even have a GPS unit because my Droid handles it for me.

All of this started, for the general public at least, about 25 years ago and look where we are today with these technologies. Will this revolutionize anything to include guns? Who knows but discounting it because it doesn't make sense or isn't affordable today is a mistake.

When ammo cam be printed, I'll get really excited.

Click to expand...

Deposition type 3d printing might be ideal for caseless ammunition, or disposable cased, even.

This is much ado about nothing. As near as I can tell all 3D printing is a manufacturing method.

Building a 1911 is much more than copying the parts. A finished firearm requires high quality base materials, properly heat treated parts, milling of certain areas and parts and skilled parts fitting.

Furthermore what and exactly is danger of 3D printing? It is currently legal for me to build my own firearm for my own use. A million dollar investment hardly seem within the means of a home hobbyist and terrorist organizations.

How many remember the hype about Glocks being invisible to X-ray scanners at airports?

Building a 1911 is much more than copying the parts. A finished firearm requires high quality base materials, properly heat treated parts, milling of certain areas and parts and skilled parts fitting

Click to expand...

A 1911, maybe . A printed PX4 or Glock clone would probably do pretty much what you'd expect it to when printed, and perform well. The 1911 was specifically designed to be made with methods that were state of the art 100 years ago; no reason a new design can't take advantage of additive-machining's unique talents (like the ability to make hollow voids and inside features that no machine tool could ever hope to reach). Basically no more investment moulds or casting operations, at a bare minimum.

Sintering could allow you to print functional assemblies, all at once, or combine multiple parts into fewer without an increase in production time.

non-technical, non-machinist people being able to download a file and hit 'print' to end up with hard parts. Unless your current home is a CNC center, that's probably a big change.

Click to expand...

Unless something big has changed in the last two months, this is more or less a myth, and shows very little chance of changing from than any time soon. Unique variances between machines will never allow you to simply "run" someone else's file blindly. The guys downloading and running plastic forms aren't exactly making structurally significant parts, and even they have to fine tune the machines constantly to get good print quality (let alone material strength). We'll need artificially-intelligent machining/printing centers that can detect quality as they run and adjust parameters to suit the job. We're still at least a few years from that (getting closer all the time, though)

I'm more worried that, by the time this equipment even has a chance of changing the game, we'd risk prison by hack-sawing a brass JACO Western frame from a downloaded template in our garage, after the NSA detects aberrant search terms in our history and dispatches the kill bots to investigate. In other words, I'm not very worried about laser sintering changing the world any time soon . I'd give it at least another decade before we could begin to call it a "mainstream" metallic manufacturing method.

We will be printing our own red SOLO cups within the next five years, however

TCB

Computer... Tea... Earl Grey... Hot... Hold the iron.

I have not read all of the posts to this.

3 D Printing is going to revolutionize everyone's world.

What we are seeing are early visible examples.

What most people do not know is that the most advanced users of this technology have been developing this capability for years.

Boeing, Formula 1 teams, Eurobus. The list of early adopters is huge.

The list of existing mature companies delivering the design software is well known. The amount of free standard plot designs is already huge.

I have seen a pool of liquid epoxy the surface of which is activated by a laser and a rod that pulls the laser shaped part out of the pool of epoxy. Shapes, forms and internal cavities can be created in mass that are not possible with any existing machining or molding.

You will be able to print anything from a metal to a plastic to an organic object within 3 years with a printer that will cost under 2000, probably in many cases under 300 (but you will pay for the ink!).

3 D printing is a game changer the earliest potential of which we are only beginning to see.

You guys/girls are comparing consumer products like computers, cell phones, microwaves, etc. etc. etc.... Yet this is technology is bound for the industrial side... How many of you have 5 axis CNC machines in your garage? WaterJets, etc. etc.?

tarosean said:

You guys/girls are comparing consumer products like computers, cell phones, microwaves, etc. etc. etc.... Yet this is technology is bound for the industrial side... How many of you have 5 axis CNC machines in your garage? WaterJets, etc. etc.?

Click to expand...

3D printers are consumer products like computers and cellphones. They are expensive and hard to use NOW, but the future of the technology is heading toward making them consumer friendly.

Your comparison of CDN machines and 3D printers are apples to oranges IMHO. CDN was never really supposed to be consumer products but 3D printing is already being made with regular people in mind. So comparing a 3D printer to a cellphone is a much more valid comparison than to a CDN.

The point you are trying to make doesn't take into consideration the future intent of the technology. They are being designed with households in mind.

Even today with the technology just starting you can find list of "top 10 budget friendly 3D printers"

http://m.fastcolabs.com/3016490/9-consumer-3-d-printers-for-every-budget

To say that it is not a consumer product means you are not looking ahead. A direct quote from the link

" But as 3-D printing becomes more popular, the number of consumer devices available for purchase is exploding. Which one should you buy? Here’s a breakdown"

They are being designed with households in mind.

Click to expand...

Ill give you the plastics/resin, etc... However this sintered metal tech will likely never make it to the masses.

tarosean said:

Ill give you the plastics/resin, etc... However this sintered metal tech will likely never make it to the masses.

Click to expand...

That is a good point. We need to keep in mind that the people building these things have consumers in mind, but not gun people. Because this is a gun forum we focus on that aspect of it. They will build it where demand and reasonable cost tell them to go.

I do think the potential for the sintered metal tech to hit the masses is possible, but the demand will probably not warrant it. I think where it will really change the gun industry is in accessories. Want night sights? Print them. Want a holster? Print it.

It will all depend on where the market demand is. I think there will be a big want/need for it in plastics, but probably not enough to make metals a household item.

I do however see a scenario where it makes it still more attainable for the metals than a CDN. I think we will see a situation where if someone wanted to invest some time and money they could get "into" metal 3D printing a lot easier than CDN, but because that target market will be so small it will still be fairly crude. I don't think 3D printing will replace gun companies, but I do think it will revolutionize they way we live. Need some kitchen utensils? Print them? Need a new toothbrush? Print it

I watched the video, did you guys see the sketchy slide return when the guy was hand-firing it? That thing barely made it back into battery. I mean, this is super cool, but I don't think the technology is reliable yet.

Affordable 3D printed metal parts is not necessarily years away

While making metal parts using fused laser sintering is currently cost prohibitive for most people, that is not the only way to 3D print metal. KickStarter is currently offering a complete, ready to print 3D printer for $199 and it even comes with an initial supply of printing media. It, like most hobbyist 3D printers, prints thermoplastic parts. It is not difficult to encase such a part in investment and convert the part to metal using the lost wax casting method. In this way it is currently affordable and relatively inexpensive for the home hobbyist to fabricate complex metal parts. This could be very useful to fabricate a hard to find part such as something for an antique or obsolete firearm. Obviously, for those so motivated, it could fabricate banned components as well. This particular printer has some severe size constraints (100mmX100mmX125mm) but MANY firearms parts are much smaller than that size limit - plus larger printers are available.

Many years ago I used lost wax casting to fabricate a shoulder stock fitting for a Luger pistol - it is not that difficult to do.

Bottom line: Affordable 3D printed metal parts is not necessarily years away.
QU-BD One UP Printer

yzguy87 wrote "...YOU CAN'T BUILD THIS IN YOUR BACKYARD
...There are barriers to entry that will keep the public away from this technology for years...Because of this I'm not to worried about one of our elected finest pointing to this as another avenue to use for gun control."

So you can download a file from the internet, send it to your printer and have a new 3.5# connector for your Glock in half an hour, all without stepping from your house-or even leaving your chair?

You mean to tell me I can print off and manufacture a 3.5# connector for my Glock off of my Epson desktop printer? If so you are spreading the same misinformation about Glocks being invisible to airport X-ray machines

Because that's what all the ado is about; non-technical, non-machinist people being able to download a file and hit 'print' to end up with hard parts.

So what? I can build a fully functional firearm in 30 minutes using materials found in your home...the only metal part I need is a small nail for a firing pin.

And what is so bad about "non-technical, non-machinist people", I think the word that fits best here is "commoners", being able to make their own parts? It is legal to do that now.

In fact individuals making firearms at their homes has been a foundation our country is built on.

this sintered metal tech will likely never make it to the masses.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't say never. It will remain more expensive and exclusive than squirting polymers out of a nozzle to form shapes, but as said above, it may become attainable to the "serious hobbyist" in the not-so-distant future.

I have a lathe and mill, I can spit out higher quality parts on less expensive equipment already, so this technology doesn't have as much appeal to me. But it takes an aptitude and years of experience to be able to run an inexpensive manual machining tool and actually create quality pieces. That, and milling machines or lathes will never drop below a certain price point simply due to the manufacturing process and materials; A laser sintering machine may very well become cheaper than conventional equipment in the future.

And who's to say what metallurgy may do for material integrity? Ruger proved that you don't have to forge to make very tough gun parts. Perhaps the media and process developed for laser sintering will evolve into something that can be equally durable. A half century ago, people would have laughed at the notion of a plastic gun being durable. Who's laughing now?

Maybe so with some items but let's don't too carried away and create groundless fears such as was done with Glocks being invisible to airport x-ray machines.

Professor Kaku, call your office.

The bell you hearing tolling tolls for the death of gun control.

Go plow the sea, DiFi.

You can ALREADY make just about any kind of gun you want, so long as you make a gun that conforms to standard firearms rules.

The barrel of you Sig is NOT made of adamantium. Its made of tool steel tempered at a moderate hardness - something you can achieve yourself in your garage.

The slide of your Ruger SR9 is not made of glamourous mystery metal. Its made of mid grade stainless.

All of these materials can be purchases dirrect by the average consumer.

Ask yourself - why is it that < 1/4" thick chamber walls of generic stainless is perfectly safe to contain 9mm+P when Ruger does it, but common knowledge (from people who have never attempted) says that same thickness of the same grade steel is a 'pipe bomb' if someone does it in their garage?

A CNC machine or high tech 3D printer is not needed to make a safe and functional firearm. All you need are decent quality build materials and common workshop machines - drill press, band saw, grinder, Dremel, and a vice will take you all the way if you are making a single shot or blowback operated weapon. These do NOT have to be junk nor dangerous. If you have a lathe or a small hobby mill then there is basically no limit to what you can make or learn to make. There is no reason something acceptable cant be fabricated by someone with a bit of mechanical inclination and some quality build materials.

Just do your research first and select appropriate materials of known origin for each of your parts. Stay away from conduit and water pipe and the chance of any kind of accident is dramatically reduced.

I work in aerospace manufacturing. Stereolithography has made traditional prototyping shops mostly obsolete. Other than fixed costs like programming, there's isn't a real tooling or setup cost associated with It which has to be amortized over large runs to get cost-per-part down to a reasonable figure.

For example, if I wanted an assembly of 20 unique individual parts for an assembly, I can queue it all on one printer and the cost is simply the summation of "machine time", programming, and raw materials. Traditionally I would have 20 separate tooling setups on multiple CNC machines that would typically involve mills, lathes, grinders, and hones, and making just one of each part is prohibitively expensive. Once the program exists, it'll be as cheap per-part for one or one thousand parts. Additive machining bypasses environmental and acquisition costs of workcutting fluids and chips and waste. Once it's a mature technology, it'll fit in perfect with JIT/lean manufacturing models. It also opens up machining thats impossible to do today in a direct manner, or impossible, period. Think internal blind passages in monolithic pieces, complex surfaces that an EDM couldn't touch or even completed multi-piece assemblies in one print which would be impossible to assemble.

Firearms-wise, if it can be controlled well enough and has favorably comparable metallurgical properties, you could experiment with progressive rifling that ramps from smoothbore at the chamber to lobed lands down the barrel to reduce peak chamber pressures and to reduce bore erosion, or the same principle applied as progressive polygonal rifling. You can start getting away from flat surfaces and perpendicular angles and move into organic shapes since workholding is no longer a manufacturing limitation.

$850k sounds spendy but there can be a huge cost savings given the right application. We have turning centers here on the floor north of a half million including live tooling costs for populating the tooling stations. They also took parts that used to take 4-6 unique operations on lathes, mills, broachers, and centerless grinders, and crammed it down to one operation. Creative people at other shops have incorporated grinding and frictional heat treating into their turning centers too. Of course, the machine would be a waste if we just made round aluminum slugs on it.

As far as the strength, proper tool for the job. There are many cast parts on planes. Are they porous and going to fail on you? Nope. As long as stringent design and engineering standards are applied, there is nothing to worry about. Parts are designed to fit known roles with known stresses and known engineering overheads. Commercial practices wildly vary but aerospace is all about traceability and liability. Technology like MIM gets a bad name when engineers don't do their job. Also anyone that has ever worked with inconels or other superalloys would be the first to support additive machining!

Oh, and good luck regulating what 3D printers can print. Might as well pass a bill that prevents inkjet printers from printing images of child pornography. There are no such regulations on the actual manufacturing equipment currently making firearms. I don't see how a 3D printer differs from a mill or waterjet. It is a piece of manufacturing equipment.

Atom Smasher said:

I watched the video, did you guys see the sketchy slide return when the guy was hand-firing it? That thing barely made it back into battery. I mean, this is super cool, but I don't think the technology is reliable yet.

Click to expand...

Really?
That's a prototype, you don't think the NEXT one will have that hangup fixed?
It looked like it was hanging up at the disconnector, IIRC.
A few hundred manual slide cycles could clean that up, or a quick visit to the polishing wheel. Guns come from Kimber needing that much help to run reliably, I don't think a little RTB hangup is a death-knell for the whole concept.

===

I still think that 3d printing of guns will be best done with moderate metallic off-the-shelf parts. Play to the strengths of the material/methods for design, for structural stuff, mags, and anything that doesn't contain pressure.
Aping existing designs that were originally intended to be made with very different methods will lead to a lot of problems and dead-ends.

Just like the Jetsons. But what happens to all the jobs that are displaced? Or will we end up with the leisure society predicted in the 1930-50's ?

OK all this talk about how expensive this printing technology is has some serious flaws. Yes the machines the patterns are made to run on are incredibly expensive. But 3-D printers are not that expensive and they have been around for at least a decade. I saw one at a county fair at least 10 years ago. They were using it to carve people's faces on wood or soft plastic. You can set them to read information from a source (like your face) with lasers then have them burn the parts off a block of wood until it looks just like your head. I actually almost bought one of them over a decade ago - for $3000.

First those were very limited in the materials they would work with and the accuracy is nothing like the machines being used to make guns. But if you wanted your face on a coffee cup (soft plastic) they will do it. I was a computer consultant in those days and I learned about a lot of technologies most people didn't hear about.

The 3D printers available now use additive processes so instead of using a laser to cut into a block of wood or plastic they actually build up a product with plastic or plaster or in the case of the really expensive models metal alloys. Those are the ones that make weapons. But what we are not considering is that the cheap models can make molds which can be used to make metal parts. We all know that cast metal parts have been very successful in certain guns (Ruger and Taurus revolvers esp. .44 magnums). It could be a method to make those long lost parts for older guns.

The newer models all seem to be the additive type instead of the kind that burns things into shape by removing the unwanted parts. I couldn't even find any info on the old design. But I know they were around. I saw one working. I would have gotten something made but the line was very long and the process very slow.

At any rate 3D printers can be bought for as little as $500 now. They just won't work with the right materials to build guns and they aren't as accurate as it takes to build gun parts. But it's no stretch to see this technology improve over the next decade. I think back to the desktop publishing business I had in 1984 and how much progress was made by just 1994. We were printing with a 9 pin, dot matrix printer. By 1994 (earlier actually) ink jets were printing on the same level as the best print shops with full color printing presses. You could make a magazine that could not be distinguished from a full color magazine found in any news stand. Well not until you started smearing the ink anyway. But eventually that problem was solved too. There are still some problems with ink jets but there are color laser printers now of course. But I'm still using an ink jet because it is cheaper now. I bought a $300 do it all printer, scanner, fax, copier that would put the best officer color copier to shame. Ink cartridges last for years and the machine will probably outlast me. I doubt I'll ever need another printer now.

But then the real deal with computers has been video. People producing video on their computers scared Hollywood so much they leaned on the computer makers to not make it so easy to produce HD video threatening huge lawsuits over copyrighted material being copied. It didn't work of course although HD editing is much tougher than SD editing. I had a great video production company going until HD became the norm. It will take a very expensive machine just to render HD video. Actually it will take a bunch of expensive computers networked to do that one job.

Still the point is that time marches on with technology. You can buy a 3D printer for $500. Before long it will be a good enough 3d printer to make whatever you want. And you'll be able to buy that one for $500 too. Or less. 3-D printing has been around since 1984 actually. It isn't going away. It just gets cheaper and better. It has taken a long time because it's a complicated thing to do. But I'm sure it will be done. The technology already exists. Its just a matter of time before the good technology becomes cheap enough for consumers.

If it hasn't been mentioned yet, a major part of the reason it's so expense is because there is still a patent on '3d metal printing' until 2014 I believe. Once that expires and other companies start competing to make them that's when the leaps and bounds in advancement (and lowering of price) should kick in.

Before you know it we'll have full on star trek replicators